MORNING BUZZ: Good Guy, Value and Suggestions

MORNING BUZZ: Good Guy, Value and Suggestions

Good Morning!

Back after a great day spent with our partners over at the Greater Des Moines Convention and Visitors bureau. Their golf outing is really fun every year and I am fortunate to have bosses who let me participate. My team got to -11 in a best ball format and didn’t even get close to winning the outing. Dr Tom Davis’ team won, in part because Dr Tom had a hole-in-one yesterday…his third in the last year! His team shot a gaudy 52 at Tournament Club of Iowa!

Good Guy

The emails we are getting from Montezuma are interesting. According to some of the people writing us, we’ve wronged the former teacher who is now charged with sexual misconduct. Prosecutors believe he had an inappropriate relationship with kids as young as 12. His friends have written us to say we’re wrong and he will be exonerated. That may be. Court records also show he resigned his job after admitting to drinking whiskey with a student IN A CLASSROOM. The court documents say he was so drunk he had to be taken to the hospital.

So I guess my point is, a court will determine his guilt or innocence on these very serious charges, but lets not make him out to be Mother Teresa.

Cut off

Neighbors on Des Moines’ East side have a beef with the City and the Railroad. Union Pacific wants Des Moines to shut down a couple of intersections on the east side to allow increased rail traffic to flow more smoothly. Understandably, the people who live in these neighborhoods say closing the rail crossings would cut them off from the city…it might even lower their property value. They want a viaduct put in so the trains and neighborhood can continue to coexist. The City says it would cost 16 million dollars.

So if it were my neighborhood I would want the viaduct. I would be mad. I would feel like the City is putting big business ahead of its citizens. But the City leaders who defended cutting off the intersections are right to say this isn’t just about this one neighborhood. Their job isn’t to protect one neighborhood…it’s to make sure the City continues to grow and prosper. Unfortunately balancing the property tax collected in that neighborhood against the property tax paid by the railroad…the money spent by hundreds of employees of the railroad and the potential for that to expand…the responsible decision is to accommodate the railroad. Again, if it were my neighborhood I would cry bloody murder. that said, if this viaduct were going to be built in the Waterbury Neighborhood…how would the people in these east side neighborhoods feel about that? I think they’d still be protesting at City Hall…against the viaduct.

Value

We had a story today to mirror the Mother’s Day week story that Moms are “worth”. The story reported what a Mom who stays at home with her family might be paid in the open marketplace for the work she does around her home. They did the same thing with Dad’s this week. The result? Dad’s work around the home is worth about $23,000 where a Mom’s work is worth more than $60,000. Certainly, the numbers are skewed by the fact that more women are caregivers and managers of the home than Men. It stands to reason that would increase the value women contribute around the home.

That said, my question: What house are they living in? If it is, in fact, the case that your wife does 2/3 more work than you do around the house…what’s the matter with you? I would also ask the ladies…Are you asking for help?

I also think this adds an interesting layer to the pay equity debate. Women are paid about 75 cents for every dollar men earn over a career. Part of that disparity is the fact that women tend to stay home to raise children…that cuts years off of their career pay scale and can, over time, decrease the amount they are being paid when compared to men of the same age. It’s not the entire gap, but it contributes. When you then balance those statistics against this survey putting a dollar value on Women’s contribution, I think it balances even more. The only problem is, we don’t pay women or men for their work around the house.

Suggestions

If you are looking for a good Father’s Day gift for your Dad I have a couple of suggestions. The new Dan Brown Book was great. It’s called Inferno. I am reading a golf book right now called A Course Called Ireland. It is REALLY good. If you want to get sentimental and your dad is a golfer… A Son of the Game is a really good read as well.